CBS is taking heat again, and this time the blowback is all about where the network pointed its top broadcast crew.
For Sunday’s 4:25 p.m. ET window, CBS assigned Jim Nantz and J.J.
Watt to Raiders-Chiefs instead of Broncos-49ers. That choice landed hard with fans because the two games were sitting side by side on the schedule, yet only one got the network’s marquee treatment.
On paper, the Broncos-49ers matchup looked like the cleaner football play. The 49ers were undefeated, the Broncos were 2-1, and plenty of observers saw it as a game with Super Bowl implications. Raiders-Chiefs, meanwhile, came in with both teams at 3-0, but it also brought the familiar pull of Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and the attention that follows Kansas City every week.
That was enough for a lot of viewers to call foul online. One fan wrote, “It’s because Patrick mahomes has these refs in this pocket so he just thinks he can call for his games to be on CBS more broncos 49ers should actually be the game of the day,” while another said, “One is a divisional game, so it makes sense, but Broncos Niners will be the more exciting game,”
A third fan put it even more bluntly: “Cbs pulls #1 tv crew from donkey 49ers game. Cbs knows America loves chiefs and mahomes,” A fourth added, “Not the @NFL going back on trying to punish the @Raiders and not give any nationally televised games to sucking us off because of our record!”
The broadcast assignment also confirmed that Tony Romo’s leave of absence is still in effect, with Nantz and Watt continuing as CBS’s main duo for the network’s biggest games. That left little mystery about who would get the spotlight - and just as little patience from fans who wanted Broncos-49ers treated like the bigger game.
The frustration came down to optics as much as anything else. Mahomes keeps drawing national attention, even in what’s being called a rebound season for Kansas City, and Kelce adds another layer of mainstream interest. But for plenty of fans, that still didn’t make up for passing over a matchup that looked, at least to them, like the better game of the day.
In Other News...
Rockies Face One Defining Offseason Test After Another 100-Loss Year
Paul DePodesta is heading into his first full offseason running baseball operations in Colorado with a clear read on the assignment. After a 58-104 season, the Rockies have now endured four straight years of 100 or more losses, and while the offense showed some improvement, the pitching side of the roster still looked far too thin to support any real progress. DePodesta has already spent time evaluating the clubs needs and said he is ready to move quickly when opportunities present themselves.
For the Rockies, the next few months amount to a defining test of whether that evaluation turns into something more meaningful than another winter of patchwork fixes. The club has to address the mound first and foremost, and the urgency is hard to ignore after another long season in the standings. What DePodesta does with that urgency, and how aggressively Colorado tries to reshape the roster, will say plenty about how serious the organization is about breaking the cycle. [Read more 🡒]